8th December 2009, Cambridge, UK. Following extensive investment in European activities, 1Spatial is pleased to announce their role in the consortium awarded the contract to 'Develop Technical Guidance for the INSPIRE Transformation Service'. This is specifically for schema transformation of geospatial datasets in Europe.
With so many regional and national Spatial Data Infrastructures at different points of development across Europe, data vary quite significantly in quality, coverage, content and structure. Pulling data together or aggregating them across Europe from the different sources, different themes and at multiple resolutions, through a services-based approach is a concept yet to be implemented in practice on any significant scale. This contract award will go part-way towards delivering the information required to better understand some of the benefits from the data sharing and harmonisation challenges that transformation addresses.
This contract will be a major contribution to the European geospatial community, effectively delivering the necessary technical guidance to help institutions in European Member States to put into operation transformation services that are consistent with the INSPIRE mandated Implementing Rules.
The consortium is being led by RSW Geomatics in conjunction with 1Spatial and Rob Walker Consultancy, all based in Cambridge, UK. The contract has been awarded by the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. The project will last eight months, starting in early 2010, and it requires a survey of:
- 'state of the art' spatial data transformation services
- the drafting of the associated technical guidance
- the prototyping of a schema transformation service
- the production of a video demonstration in three languages
Dr Michael Sanderson, Chief Executive Officer of 1Spatial added:
"We are already involved in European initiatives, such as ESDIN through eContentplus, and in the past we have worked successfully on European Framework Programmes. This contract award is a result of our extensive experience around Spatial Data Infrastructures and our solutions for delivering schema transformation and conformance checking against INSPIRE data specifications. This award also comes at a time when we have just celebrated 40 years in business, so it's a special time for the company."
Other partners in our successful bid were Legally Mandated Organisations who will provide data, e.g. NLS Finland, NLS Sweden and Statens kartverk Norway. Outside of Scandinavia, Ordnance Survey Ireland and Land & Property Services Northern Ireland are also in the consortium as data providers.
For more information please contact Steven Ramage
Tel: +44 (0)1223 420414
Fax : +44 (0)1223 420044
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About the Consortium
RSW Geomatics Director, Robin Waters, is an experienced project manager and communicator of geographic information concepts and practice. He is the secretary of the British Standards Institution (BSI) committee for standards in geographic information (IST36) and chair of the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) working group on INSPIRE. He has recently completed evaluation of 'sub national' SDIs in the UK and Ireland for the EC's eSDI-Net+ project.
1Spatial is a world leader in object based data modelling with over 20 years experience working worldwide. It is an active participant in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and has been involved in testbeds since 1998. It has presided over various commissions in EuroSDR and also contributes to several pan European projects, not least with EuroGeographics. Most recently 1Spatial has participated in the testing of INSPIRE data specifications and has developed a 'Tried and Tested' schema transformation solution for INSPIRE, which includes quality validation and GML3.2.1 encoding. This has been developed as part of the ESDIN project with national mapping and cadastre agencies throughout Europe, many of whom are Legally Mandated Organisations for INSPIRE.
Dr Rob Walker is the UK's leading expert on international standards for geographic information, ex chairman of IST36 and leader of the UK delegation to ISO TC211 and CEN TC287. He is the immediate past Chairman of the Association for Geographic Information and sits on the AGI Council and the INSPIRE working group. He coordinated the majority of the AGI comments on INSPIRE Implementing Rules and, with RSW Geomatics, was contracted by the Natural Environment Research Council to report on their readiness for INSPIRE during 2008.
About the JRC
The Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment & Sustainability with the European Commission Directorate General responsible for environment and the statistical Office of the European Commission (Eurostat) was responsible for developing the INSPIRE Directive which came into force in 2007. The JRC, as the overall technical coordinator for INSPIRE, has particular responsibility for the development of Implementing Rules concerning Network Services, interoperability of spatial datasets and services and metadata.